occupy 2012

2012: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy As the Human World Breaks Apart

The modern idea that human civilization would collapse in 2012 supposedly goes back to another overextended American empire on its last legs, that of the Maya. But like so much wrong thinking now popular in today’s United States, this concept made its first impression on the nation’s nervous consciousness through the teevee screen. In Search Of, the syndicated paranormal program hosted by Leonard Nimoy, claimed that the Mesoamerican long count calendar came to an end on December 24, 2011. (That date has moved a year forward in today’s paranoid circles.) You are probably waiting for the “Ron Paul connection,” at this point, and it is this: According to Leonard Nimoy reading a script for a pseudoscience documentary series in 1977, the end of the Mayan calendar would bring a cataclysmic earthquake, the collapse of the dominant civilization, and the creation of an internationalist New World Order. Actual scholars of the ancient Mayan culture, however, believe the end of the calendar would bring not disaster, but a wonderful celebration. Who’s right? WHO WILL WIN?

The reason the 2012 phenomenon is so formidable is not exclusively because Americans are uneducated superstitious bigoted cretins who’ve been duped since the beginning of the republic and have only “learned things from the teevee” since the Reagan Era. 2012 sticks in our collective consciousness because the story of the Mayans resonates deeply in our own time of slow-motion calamity. The Mayan empire crumbled about 1,200 years ago, and its people were scattered as the Earth reclaimed a vast civilization built upon nationalism, war, torture, expansionism and spectacle.

Non-ecological theories of Maya decline are divided into several subcategories, such as overpopulation, foreign invasion, peasant revolt, and the collapse of key trade routes. Ecological hypotheses include environmental disaster, epidemic disease, and climate change. There is evidence that the Maya population exceeded the carrying capacity of the environment including exhaustion of agricultural potential and overhunting of megafauna. Some scholars have recently theorized that an intense 200 year drought led to the collapse of Maya civilization. The drought theory originated from research performed by physical scientists studying lake beds, ancient pollen, and other data, not from the archaeological community. Newer research from 2011, with use of high-resolution climate models and new reconstructions of past landscapes, suggests that converting much of their forest land into cropland may have led to reduced evapotranspiration and thus rainfall, magnifying natural drought.

Too many people, a catastrophic Dust Bowl created by wanton scraping and cultivation of the wild lands, deforestation, endless war, climate change, epidemic disease, collapse of key trade routes, it’s all there today. But what might truly push 2012 into “2012” is that standard ingredient of toppled empires, the “peasant revolt.” Worldwide, the 99% is in revolt. Worldwide, and even in the United States. Imagine, a year ago, predicting the global revolutions that made 2011 the most interesting and consequential year in half a century.

Nothing proves the ubiquity of the uprising more than watching pundits argue its real beginning. Was it Tunisia in January or Wisconsin and Athens in February or Madrid and Barcelona in May? What about Israel in July, London in March, or London in August! Was Twitter the fuse, or was it Adbusters and Anonymous?

Revolutions are brewing in more than 80 countries today, and for every sad example of protests crushed in 2011 — throughout sub-Saharan Africa, in Tibet and throughout China — there are many examples of government and business on the run, from the crime-lord thug Putin to the criminal political lapdogs of the Koch Brothers.

“I wish it was the Sixties,” Thom Yorke whines on Radiohead’s The Bends, “I wish, I wish, I wish something would happen.” And then when it happened, in Zuccotti Park in September 2011, Radiohead was uptown taping an ironic television appearance complete with anti-corporate posturing. Called by thousands to come downtown and support the occupation, they instead told the Wall Street Journalthey weren’t coming. This was the year when wishes began to come true, and those who wished falsely were exposed — whether they were comfortable English rock stars or millionaire golfers who rode to the White House on a wave of populist hope.

Apocalyptic movements only grow beyond the fanatics and cultists when the whole of human consciousness is tugged by the need to overturn the tables and make examples of the moneychangers. So at the Millennium, barely a decade behind us now, an unlikely mix of anti-globalization actions, religious prophecy, technophobia and a simmering disgust with the elite led to the cataclysms and duds of 1999-2000 — Y2K, Vicente Fox and Hugo Chavez, Falun Gong, the Battle of Seattle and the introduction of the Euro, and especially Bush v. Gore.

Subdued by official crime and state power, the bitterness and dissatisfaction and dull horror of American life seemed to manifest itself in the terror attacks of the next year, and for a little while that seemed to stun everyone into a dream state — a nightmare state — as the actual state took every opportunity to advance the empire, the resource wars, the degradation of humanity and nature.

And now, this … whatever “this” may turn out to be. 2012 may be an apocalypse or it may be a celebration, but what’s much more likely is it will be one outcome for the 1%, and another outcome for everyone else. Happy new year!

Ooh, dibs on the tshirts: "I told you, he IS a Mulism!!1!" "Don't Blame Me, I (write-in) voted For Palin," "If the Hoveround is rockin'…" Ka-ching!

Barb

Wow, hard to get happy after reading this.

nounverb911

Cheer up. You have new grandkids to look forward to!

Barb

Thanks for the reminder! Now I have more human shields when the sweet release of death comes after me. Jeff and I had an in depth talk about our plans for the zombie apocalypse last night. I made a list of people that I will trip to get away.

Subdued by official crime and state power, the bitterness and dissatisfaction and dull horror of American life seemed to manifest itself in the terror attacks of the next year, and for a little while that seemed to stun everyone into a dream state — a nightmare state — as the actual state took every opportunity to advance the empire, the resource wars, the degradation of humanity and nature.

So, a celebration, then! Who brought the XTC?

DustBowlBlues

It's disheartening to be a former hippie who has gotten so old she no longer knows drug initials.

Tommmcattt

Ecstasy, darling. And if you haven't done it, you should…everyone should at least once. They gave it to a Japanese monk and he called it "The False Nirvana"…

Loaded_Pants

Ah yes, the only thing that made me love my fellow party people who I normally hated.

a little boy asked me should he put his vote upon the left, no.
a little boy asked me should he put his vote upon the right, no.
i say it really doesn't matter where you put your vote.
someone else will come along and move it
and it's always been the same.
it's just a complicated game.

not that Dewey

That was the song that initially won me over to Andy Partridgism. Do you know how many times I've intensely debated using that as my "profile" quote?

poncho_pilot

well, it's like Steppenwolf sang it, "it's never too late to change your intense debate profile quote again." i could never get my previous band interested in XTC which is unfortunate because i really wanted to cover Complicated Game.

not that Dewey

It's too long. There seems to be a twitter-style length limit to the profile quotes, and I could never settle on a proper excerpt.

My singer and I were big fans, and after years of needling we finally got the drummer to agree to cover 25 O'Clock, once, at one gig.

poncho_pilot

the current band i'm in might do Senses Working Overtime. that should be a good time. 25 O'Clock would be a lot of fun to cover! the next band i start is going to be along similar lines, psych stuff so i'm partial to that.

not that Dewey

I've got a Wurli, a Hammond, Epiphone Les Paul with Vox and Silvertone amps,a Jazz bass, and drums, and I know most of the songs. Where do you live?

Actually, watch the pages of chalkhills.org — I've got chords/tabs to "Washaway" that I've been working on; I'll be posting it soon. It's one of the few songs that has no tabs posted. I did a version of 25 O'Clock, but the version they have up is already pretty good. Simple, but good.

And fuck, here I was just pouring the first glass of "mother's milk". (Mah Whaaan).

CapeClod

Some old, religious crank predicted the end of the world, twice, in 2011 and I'm still getting spam emails for boner pills.

I hope the new Mayan calendar has a picture of a different kitten every month.

user-of-owls

You want a serious case of the heebie-jeebies? Wander the aisles of a calendar store in your local mall. No kidding. I was there to buy my annual "oh shit, I have no idea what to get Mrs. Owls and its fucking xmas eve!" calendar and I'm going to need therapy for a loooonnnngggg time. It was beyond creepy to contemplate the life of someone who deeply desires to look at ______________ * for 365 days.

*It's a fill-in-the-blank puzzle for all to play! I know I should have phrased it, "You know who else wanted to look at something creepy for an entire year?", but hey, I'm above cheap pandering like that.**

Aside: most of the technology we use at work is primarily used in military radar, "electronic countermeasures", or my favorite, "electronic warfare". So the vendors just assume that all of their customers are into this sort of thing. Rhode and Schwartz, a manufacturer of high-end RF test equipment, just sent me a 2012 Military Porn calendar, where each month features a different photo of a tank, helicopter, fighter jet or aircraft carrier, overlaid with some signal analyzer or whatnot. I may want to sit on a towel.

user-of-owls

Oooh, a signal analyzer! Now I've got a major girl boner!

And your work sounds very interesting. If my computer some day grows little legs and runs out my 4th story office window screaming "I can fly, I can fly!", now I'll know why. But really, simply ceasing to test LSD on humans and testing it on unwitting computers really doesn't address the core ethical issues, does it? Remember, my friend, computers are people too.

not that Dewey

At least you have 4-story buildings. Elitist.

not that Dewey

and THAT'S NOT WHAT I DO! Heaven forfend if I were ever to find myself working in the Death from Above industry. When President Perry or President Bachmann eliminates all funding for science, I will have to go supplicate before some icy-veined Lockheed or nuclear weapons lab functionary and beg for a job, since it will be the only kind of job there is. Rather, I will drop out and go sign on at my buddy's family ranch in the Gila wilderness and tend the cows, or something. It may be less intellectually stimulating, but at least I won't have to worry about Meeting Tomorrow's Challenges on the Networkcentric Battlefield

Don't taunt me. I just demolished a computer after seeing a headline (!) on MSNBC no less that said one of those pestilent sores had a budget of something like three quarters of a million dollars for a fucking New Year's Eve party. I swear the wall isn't good enough to put them against come the Revolution. My sincere desire is that they are forced to dig their own deep graves with their manicured fingernails before being bludgeoned. A bird can wish, right?

ThundercatHo

I have never watched their show (and am mellowed on Maxalt) so my level of rage is not as high as yours but my wish is that they are all forced to be lunch ladies at Gitmo and yes, I want the video.

I just went online and applied for a Discover card with a $50,000.00 credit limit. I say we all go on a booze cruise and we go out fighting, fucking and drinking. It's not like the bill is going to arrive or anything. Who's with me?

freakishlywrong

Let's go! South to St. Somewhere. At least they offer soshalized medicine.

Yipes, Barb, can't we get a card that more people accept? Like, Diner's Club or something?

tessiee

Fry: Here's my Visa card.
Store clerk [condescendingly]: Visa went out of business 800 years ago.
Fry: Well, how about my Mastercard?
Store clerk: Mastercard went out of business 700 years ago.
Fry: Discover card?
Store clerk: Sorry, we don't take Discover.
— "Futurama"

Dudleydidwrong

I'm in. If 2000 of us go and we each have a credit card we can start using one person's card to pay off the other card in an endless stream that will get us through the year to December 21, 2012. And then, when the ship sinks, we can all sing the praises of the Bank of America. First drinks are on me!

Hell, it worked for Bernie Madoff for how many years?

Negropolis

I think you just accurately described the United States Treasury's fiscal plan for the nation.

Damned intense debate lost my reply to this, because they suck. From memory, then: is that not what I just did, with that link? The Biscuit Burners are on hiatus, what with higher education and raising babies and such. The lead vocalist, Shannon Whitworth, has gone off on her own and should also be checked out. Proud to call these kids my friends…

They're friends of yours? VERY cool. Shannon Whitworth has an incredible voice. Thank you for the addition to my music library.

PuckStopsHere

Uh, all of them Katie? (W/apologies to User of Owls).

flamingpdog

I'm dumping my Discover Card. Twenty years without a late payment, and one three-day late payment a couple of months ago and I get hit with a 30-dollar charge! But if we're all going to fuck Discover Card on the way outta here, I'M IN!!!

Call their customer service. I got them to waive mine (a different credit card) just by asking, although it helped that I'd kept up payments on schedule, same as you.

flamingpdog

I thought about that, but I'm dumping them on general principle. Fuckers.

Callyson

Count me in! And I'll contribute by maxing out my Stank of America card (which I got by accident when I applied for a credit card from my alumni association–read the fine print carefully before you think you're helping the alma mater!)

Steverino247

"…fighting, fucking and drinking."

In that order?

DaRooster

I'll drink first… helps douse the pain and make me happy… (you figure which is for which)

I've actually been advocating this for sometime. Everyone who can should credit card up and then stiff the banks next December. It'd bring the financial system to its knees where it would be that much easier to kick out its teeth.

Weed? Yes, there will also be Cheetos and porn and hookers and firetrucks…..

ThundercatHo

Fuck Cheetos, I want the midnight Chocolate buffet. Come to think of it I also want the pizza buffet, the burger bar, seafood and sushi buffet, tappas, and mexican, especially if there is going to be weed.

improved? While we have less dust, back in the 30s they knew the banks were the enemy. They sent people to the lege who wanted to turn the state into a worker's paradise. Failure to join the union in the oil patch could result in serious bodily harm. Less dust, but a helluva lot more ragweed, so even that's a wash.

In answer to your question, NO

flamingpdog

In 36 years in the square state, most of them traveling all over the state, I've only seen one tarantula in the wild, and that was a small stone's throw from the Oklahoma/Colorado state line. I figured the guy was trying to tell me something.

ProgressiveInga

"2012 may be an apocalypse or it may be a celebration…"

And on Wonkette, they are joyously one and the same. ☂ ☼
Happy New Year, b*tches!

Happy New Year to you too, Ken. May the coming apocalypse bring you much happiness.

Lionel[redacted]Esq

Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark – I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build – I'll be there, too.

This won't do, Ken. How can I die happy unless someone hurries up and plants a cream pie (rancid, preferably) in Pat Robertson's sneering, petrified mug?

MzNicky

You know who else deserves a rancid cream pie in the face before we all die in the coming apocalypse? All of 'em, Katie, of course!, but no really, you know who, besides Pat Robertson, really really does?

Art, art for art's sake, I'd like you to meet my lawyer
Heart, heart like a snake, make a mistake and boy your
bones, bones gonna shake, could be slander
Move, move to Brazil
With bucks, bucks in the bank

Art For Art's Sake, The Bobs

Nothingisamiss

My God, you may just have written my new year's mission statement. (If such a thing had ever existed for me.)

paris biltong

I'm in Switzerland right now and can assure you that there is a safe haven somewhere for those who can afford it (I'm just visiting).

Dudleydidwrong

Ah, Lassie, come the apocalypse you'll hear the last Swiss yodel. Hopefully it will be saying, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuuu, Newwwwwwt Gingrichhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Steverino247

If you're in Switzerland, what exactly the fuck are you doing on line?

Depends on where you are. Alas, it is Friday night almost midnight there. I see your point.

There is some extraordinarily good food to be had there.

Steverino247

Count money?

soeoho

Holy Cheese!

paris biltong

They've got machines to do that. It's a real cash economy. They don't use checks. Nothing unusual about seeing people in front of you at the bank withdrawing tens of thousands of Swiss francs. Makes me feel economically irrelevant.

I reached my "I'm not willing to go any further with these questions" point when a good friend and colleague dragged me to a bar halfway through the workday to sob her heart out over the fact that after she had had gender reassignment surgery (having mostly grown up as a woman due to a not-entirely-uncommon disorder), she was splitting up with her partner who was an out lesbian because SHE (the partner) wanted gender reassignment surgery, and my friend didn't want to be in a relationship with a man. I have my own sex and gender issues, but both these people had kids from previous relationships who were living with them at the time. If I can't keep track of what the parents are fucking going through, how the hell are the kids supposed to?

So, yeah. The "Q" in LGBTQQ stands for Queer and also for Questioning.

gullywompr

I'm afraid it's much more vanilla than that – I enjoy them when they are worn by girls.

Good grief. Well I guess some of you don't remember or weren't around when I talked about getting my Girl Scout Abortionist Badge ;)

I guess I've used quite a bit of cursing here and there, which in some circles (like the Bible Belt hellhole that I live in) is considered unladylike, but I assure you all that I am not a man in fat girl jeans. And I stress again – my butt is NOT THAT BIG ! I just don't weigh 96lbs like I did when I graduated from high school. le sigh.

memzilla

It's like what the airplane propeller did when the beautiful woman backed into it: Disaster.

Happy New Year, Ken, to you and yours, on your soon-to-be-beachfront property!

I'm hoping for celebration — for President Obama's reelection, for the dismantling of Rupert Murdoch's vast criminal enterprise, for the death throes of the Dubya tax cuts and the scaling down of income inequality, for the Republican party to keep eating itself into nothingness, for regulation and transparency to put an end to the boom-and-bust speculation of the last thirty years, for the emergence of liberal democracies in the most unlikely places, for the US to make a concerted effort at using alternative fuels, cleaning up the environment and thinking further into the future than the next quarterly dividend, and for good cheap weed to be readily available.

I mean I'll settle for the good cheap weed, but some of the other stuff would be nice too.

I fuckin' hope so, 'cause that last batch of tenants she had like to about KILLED the ol' bird. Trashed the whole place, 'n everything.

tessiee

Dolphins will be high-fiving (or high-oneing) each other and chattering happily with relief.
*chatter chatter chatter**
[translation: we're at the top of the food chain now!]

mavenmaven

I pretty much lost it after seeing the end of the world in "Millenium". It's all internet porn until the real world ends.

dijetlo

So it's basically "steady as she goes, full steam ahead" for you, eh?

mavenmaven

Oh, typo, the movie was called "melancholia". Oops…

Loaded_Pants

I remember the movie "Millenium" so your comment really confused me at first. Thanks for the clarification.

DustBowlBlues

"Actual scholars of the ancient Mayan culture, however, believe the end of the calendar would bring not disaster, but a wonderful celebration. Who’s right? WHO WILL WIN?"

This is America, pal. We don't call them scholars. They are the elites and want to take our guns. All we know or want to know is what Faux Newz and Hate Radio tell us.

user-of-owls

They're right you know. Every year, we all fly down to Calakmul using money allocated for Sesame Street and crippled retarded orphans and wearing $2000 dresses on the solstice. At midnight, when the full moon lights the secret chamber, we chant (in flawless Post-Classical K'ekche), "Give up your guns, we mean you no harm, ignore the black helicopters." Over and over again.

Good thing no one pays attention to Fox and talk radio!

ShaveTheWhales

Good Night, Kalabash, whoever you are.

user-of-owls

[bring about] the collapse of the dominant civilization

Oh no! What shall become of the poor Freemasons! Won't anybody think about the Freemasons?!

After the Thom Yorke debacle last fall I went under the moniker of Radiodead for a few weeks. My claim was there was no sound track to the Occupy movement, and Radiohead had an opportunity to make a global statement. A simple acoustic set amongst the occupiers would have been devastating. What, did their record label say no? Were they lazy? Uninspired? Logistical? Whatever, they didn't do it, and I was disappointed. Ah, fuck it, I've had my heart broken before. Oh, I'll listen to selected works in their catalogue, much like looking at pictures of old flames, but never shall I spend a penny or think they were "kinda cool" or the British Wilco.
Karma Police, indeed.

Golfing_OJ

One of the most encouraging things about #Occupy is how they don't need to be comforted by no stinkin' bands.
The theory is that this generation of kids doesn't need to be hard-sold on anything because they're already sold, like you just point them someplace and they buy shit. WTF else would explain all that horrific bullshit coming out of the Bowery Ballroom for nearly all of the Aughts?
Whatevs, hopefully all that crap will be gone in 2012. M83's last album is a good sign, anyway.

Biff

Least encouraging thing? Fucking drum circles, man!

SorosBot

Instead, the artist who tried to give a soundtrack to the Occupy movement was, of all people, Miley Cyrus.

DaRooster

They truly could be the worst ever…
… and I will not listen to them again… I hope.

Clungeflaps

I've always thought radiohead were overrated. And honestly the worst people to represent the working class. They're a bunch of toffee nosed British public school twerps! Aren't they from Oxford? Fuuuuuuuck off.

I actually sort of liked tem until they started plagiarizing laughing stock era Talk Talk and aphex twin.

Meh, I've been told the world is ending on ->insert date<- so many times in the last twelve months, I'm not even creating events for it in my google calendar anymore. I'll get a text when the servers shut down, until then I'm pretending I didn't read this.

SorosBot

Just the last twelve months? There have been people predicting the imminent end of the world constantly since Zoroaster, if not earlier.

One of the former Mr. Tessie's many crackpot books predicted the end of the world on 5/5/2000; I'm not sure exactly what was supposed to happen, but the cover depicted what looked like a giant pyramid of ice.

At least when Nimoy played his greatest role – that of Galvatron on Transformers: the Movie – he openly admitted to being evil instead of concocting some insane pseudo-philosophical justification to claim his evil acts were really somehow good; also, he was being mind-controlled by Orson Welles' Unicron, his final and finest role.

OneYieldRegular

Golly. And here I thought we were just like the Romans, and civilization would collapse because of lead in our water pipes.

I'm gonna be busy for a while memorizing every note of Revolver for when there's no juice to run the players or recharge the Pods anymore.

MzNicky

Tomorrow never knows.

Dudleydidwrong

Get a bird and a dog and teach them the music like that goddamn woman in the goddamn ad. "Hit it, Mr…"

DustBowlBlues

Evidently, I'm not the only Baby Boomer who reads the wonket.

not that Dewey

You're making me feel like I've never been born.

unStunned

Life goes on within you and without you.

littlebigdaddy

A friend of mine is making lots of royalty bucks on a book debunking 2012. Buy it and give it to the nut jobs at work or whatever who go on about that shit! But Ken is right–despite the ridiculous premise, this is a time of change. Like the twentieth century, the twenty-first really began a decade or so late. Lets hope for the orgies rather than trench warfare, though.

I'm all for orgies. Long as we're all busy getting our tinglysweaty on, we can't possibly be giving each other grief.

flamingpdog

I'm going to spend the New Years weekend packing my basement with booze and crackers for the Apocalypse in 2012.

Loaded_Pants

Don't forget the the cans of "imitation beef".

I recall some guy was shilling that stuff on the Pat Robertson's prophecy-laden teevee show, the "700-hundred-year-old Club," right before Y2K. You might be able to get a bargain on it because they probably had so many unsold cans left over from almost 13 years ago. (I'm sure "imitation beef" doesn't spoil)

Biff

Sweet jeebus, what kind of wine and cheese goes with those?

Snarkfest

OMG don't get Nabisco Crackers. We opened a 'fresh pack' today and the saltines smelled like dead woodchuck dipped in week old barf. Unbelievable stench.
I'm calling them in the morning.

user-of-owls

Now would be a good time for everyone to read 1491 by Charles C. Mann. Not only does it systematically destroy all the "common wisdom" that continues to be taught from first grade to college, it brings the snark!

I'm only around 60 pages in and already have a favorite bit. He's describing the initial contact between the Pawtuxet used-car salesman-type Tisquantum (aka Squanto) and the smelly, dim-witted Pilgrims. Mann notes that Tisquantum is not a name per se, but a description of cosmic rage. An assumed name, in other words. Mann's description of the meeting is hilarious and begins, "So when Tisquantum shook the invaders' hand it's as if he was saying, "Hello. I'm the Wrath of God."

I'm thinking of using that to introduce myself to my students next semester.

Thank you very much for that recommendation. My life has become so much richer since I accepted my gimpitude and, somewhat fortuitously, shortly thereafter found Teh Wonketz.

Let me also take this opportunity to thank whatever powers there be that I am not your student, also. Too.

Isyaignert

Wink wink. Also. Too.

user-of-owls

You'll enjoy it, I bet. And you would delight in being my student. I consistently get student evaluations in the 90th percentile and I just won the university's most prestigious award for teaching and mentoring three weeks ago!. I'd fill your head with all sorts of wondrous and subversive ideas.

See, that's the reason right there. I'd be so overjoyed, all relaxed, getting ready to pet that furry, proferred warm little bellyfull of brilliance, when SLASH! you would disembowel my hopeful self and leave my dreams all ichor-staining the sands upon which I had writ large my futile struggle and >shudder< I'd be left all cold and drained, defenseless and gimpy-assed and painfully aware of it as the monsters of my subconscious close in, clacking claws.

I need a cigarette.

Chichikovovich

Wow. I'm glad I just have to tell students that they wrongly assumed compactness, or that unique prime factorization holds in the Gaussian integers. Haven't had a student yet who was cold, drained, defenseless,
gimpy-assed and painfully aware of it as the monsters of his/her subconscious close in, clacking claws after getting a bad grade on a problem set.

Let me add my voice to that, user. No snark, kudos on your fine, fine achievement. I'm remembering with gratitude the teachers and mentors I've had across the years.

user-of-owls

Thanks, that means a lot. It really does. I have a sort of simple theory about teaching. You, me and probably most people have had at least one good teacher, inside or outside a classroom. The only way I know to pay the debt I owe them is to try and pass on to the next generation the lessons they've taught me. About substance, of course, but also about kindness, respect and a passion for learning. So that's why I teach.

Wife was a lower grade elementary teacher. I went over to her school one Friday afternoon to get her paycheck so that I could get it to the bank before things started bouncing. She asked me to watch her class while she went to the office to get her check. Several kids were up and pushing each other around so I invited them to sit down. One of them loudly asked "Who are you?" I replied in a jocular manner, "I'm your worst enemy." The little bastard ran up and kicked me in the shin!

If you haven't already seen Russell Peters Pearce in his YouTube clip: White People: You Gotta Beat Your Children, check it out. I pissed myself laughing.

Edited to correct name. I don't know WHY I keep calling him Pearce. Must be some deep-seated aversion to Peters, as it were.

Chichikovovich

The father of one of my son's soccer teammates is an Indian from Kerala whose emigrated to Toronto and then to the 'States. He turned me on to Russell Peters, who's a pretty funny guy generally, but who really hit his high mark on the "Beat your kids" sketch. (Watching games, every time one of our kids would make a mistake, we'd lean toward each other and say "Somebody's gonna get a hurtin' real bad." Never got old.)

I think you have to have been raised by South Asian parents to get the full effect – I loved the sketch, but he loved it with a kind of visceral jolt of recognition.

Asian parents in general, I think. We watched with a friend's daughter who's a high-schooler, and she said something about "Oh,yeah, an Asian 'F'." Apparently, the Asian kids get their butts beat off for coming home with anything less than an A+ in everything, so the kids at her school call B-grades "an Asian 'F'." My sister thought it was hilarious, although memories of my mother and flying furniture sort of dimmed the glow a bit for me. He is hilariously funny, though.

Chichikovovich

No snark, no joke: My son's best friend is Asian, and a couple of weeks ago the friend's mother asked her son: "I'm not sure I like you spending so much time with [Chichikovovichovich]. Do you even know what university he wants to go to?"

For a contrasting perspective on Asian parenting, here's a commercial for Tim Horton's Doughnuts that was a huge sensation in Canada a few years ago. My mother still gets teary-eyed whenever she sees it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QINv6rebyTU

While Russell Peters is just the cutest pudgy pinchable little dollbaby. Looks just like a girl I once had a crush on — whose last name was *also,* coincidentally, Peters.

Radiotherapy

Do fill us in on how the book ends.

user-of-owls

Badly. Best estimates now put the extermination rate somewhere around 90% in the first 150 years or so of La Conquista (the Palestinians have a better word, nakba. The Catastrophe). Ninety fucking percent.

So no, alas, no happy ending. Fucking guinea should have drowned at sea. The Euros would be speaking Nahuatl by now.

Funny you say that old friend, and without being trite about a Nazi reference, but do you know what Hitler used as a model for his first, not so secret and bigger lebensraum-Holocaust, i.e. the slaughter of 25-30 million Slavs? How about the eradication of Native Americans? Just as Norman Davies is a truly great historian, Howard Zinn pointed out what Owl's said in the first paragraph of his greatest work: A People's History of the United States.
Not to be so unhappy at the end of the year — Happy Fucking New Year's to both of you sparkling souls.

Happy Fucking New Year to you too, darlz. It is such a pleasure to have met you and to continue your acquaintance. In this dark cold world of Mittens Romneycarian blizzards, you are a veritable warm spark, a ray of sunshine, a beam of light, a welcoming fire. Many fond hugs to you and your'n.

It was quite an education for me to learn that the savage Redskin practice of collecting the scalps of treacherously murdered enemies was a practice first taught to them by Teh White Man. Who'd'a thunk those pillars of civilization weren't quite so civilized as they made themselves out to be?

vulpes82

GREAT book! Truly extraordinary eye-opener. Who knew the Indians weren't just hippy Noble Savages in moccasins who lived as one with Mother Earth and sang all the colors of the wind, but a bunch of forest-burning bastards who were just as apt as Europeans to lie, cheat, and war? It's like they were HUMANS or something!

But, seriously, great book. And there's a sequel now: 1493, about the world AFTER Columbus! Apparently, sweet potatoes totally changed Chinese history. Also, globalization has been fucking shit up for a long, long, loooooooong time.

user-of-owls

It IS a great book…and I'm only starting it! I saw a blurb about the sequel…looks like I got a lotta reading to keep me busy. Alas, the only time most of us profs get to read for pleasure is over breaks and during the summer. And you're not shittin' about an eye opener. I'm going to have to totally revamp my lectures on pre-Columbian Latin America. Yay!

Since I don't know if I'll have online access where I'm spending New YEars, lemme go ahead and anticipate hoisting a tumbler to those here who kept my personal 2011 from divebombing, peregrine-falcon-style, into self-combusted shards of wounded ego. I have 2011 to thank for the coining of "greasy birth canyon," ™edgydrifter'), "conflabberdaddled" (™Extemporanus), — and not least, the entire busload of Democratic state senators from Wisconsin for keeping 2011 from sucking too badly.. until May anyway, and I don't wanna remember much else from that spring.

No kidding. Have a wonderful every-minute-from-now-till-same-time! Although I hope to see you here many times over the course of the coming year.

Come here a minute

It's a small stretch to say the ninety-nine percenters in the US are in revolt. Mostly, they just want a job. And the people they're protesting against just respond, "Get a job!" So, yeah, not getting better.

flamingpdog

“I wish it was the Sixties,” Thom Yorke whines on Radiohead’s The Bends.

Words that, curiously, never seen to fall from the lips of people who were actually there. 60's nostalgia party anyone?

Fuck, no. There was a WHOLE LOT more killing going on back then. Funny, innit? I think these are, relatively, the most peaceful days I've seen in my life despite all the protests. Back then, protestors were being shot and tossed in rivers in their millions in China, Indonesia, VietNam, and hanging like fruit from the trees in Bangkok. Hijackings were hardly news and bombings and aborted revolutions were everywhere.

Not to worry. I received two 2012 calendars for Christmas and they both extend all the way through the year. Why would printers waste all that money putting December 31 in the calendars if there was not going to be a December? Is Ken Layne smarter than them?

I join with the chorus of voices in my head to wish all Wonketeers a Merry Apocalypse. Thanks for the fun ride all year long.

Ew. I had mine late enough in the game that the actual scar is very small, under 8" I think (my ex-MIL had a scar that ran from the middle of her thigh down to the middle of her shinbone). I tend towards keloids. Not the most attractive of scar tissue.

littlebigdaddy

I must thank you for raising my spirits from time to time over the past annus horribilus.

Good to see someone besides me is watching Armageddon Week on History International! Ken, you will want to avoid the Brad Metzler Decoded episode on the Mayan Calendar. Spock's interpretation seems like a walk in the park in comparison.

Rotundo_

Canned food and shotgun shells, water purification supplies, will be next year's widescreen 3D HDTV's that we peppergas one another for. Should pay for a few more paintings for the new art museum down in Arkansas and the Koch's cancer treatments. WalMart should have a survivalist aisle by now anyways considering the clientele.

The world will end in 2012? So, that means Bachmann wins the election and the Teapublicans take over both houses of congress, right? It's time to go were we can be safe…Pacoima? "The resident meetings with Latino gang members resulted in a 143 day consecutive period of no drive by shootings." See?, safer.

vulpes82

Not to be pedantic (too late), but the Mayans are still around, you know. And Mayan civilization only collapsed in the lowlands; the Yucatan Maya kept happily building cities right up until Cortez showed up, and even after. Also, the Maya never were an empire, just a collection of city-states of various sizes and degrees of influence and prestige.

soeoho

Cheetah's passing was the 6.8th sign.
I still have dibs on the post-apocalyptic candy concession.

Here in New York, there are all these big posters in bus shelters, urging heads of families to be sure to have a bag packed by the door. They don't come out and say it, but the implication is, you're supposed to pick this bag up and head for an evacuation shelter once someone detonates a dirty bomb on Times Square and anyone whose eyeballs didn't melt from the blast has to move out of the very toxic, radioactive zone. What are we supposed to put in these bags? Gold coins? How are we supposed to conduct transactions when our ATM's don't work any more? Would they put specific instructions for that set of circumstances somewhere on the posters, in large print?

poorgradstudent

It is kind of ironic that it will be neoliberalism, not fascism or Communism, that will kill America. In nerd terms it's like beating Sauron and Darth Vader only to lose to Cobra Commander.

Can someone please tell me the definitive differences between neo-cons and neo-libs?

not that Dewey

Hopefully a proper poli-sci type will come to correct me, but my lay, outsider's understanding is that neocon is primarily a foreign policy position, characterized by aggressive interventionism, with little regard for domestic economics. Neolib is primarily a domestic economic position that promotes deregulation, transfer of public goods and service to the private sector, expansion of global "free" trade, but is rather isolationist militarily.

In other words, they both represent pretty much the worst that America has to offer, and our government tends to oscillate between the two.

user-of-owls

Right on the money, Master Dewey. You get an A+- though for suggesting that we oscillate between the two. We are quite able and willing, it seems, to hold contradictory positions with nary a whiff of cognitive dissonance.

And F. Scott notwithstanding, in this case it is an unmistakable sign of some sort of mental pathology.

poorgradstudent

I agree that Master Dewey nailed it – as do you. I'd describe Obama himself as an out-and-proud neoliberal and simultaneously a closeted neoconservative.

sati_demise

unfortunately.

Bluestatelibel

So this makes it even more likely that the client who's been stiffing me on payment is not going to ever pay me, nice.

ttommyunger

You know what, if I wake up in the morning, I'll deal with it. Just like always.

Look, this whole Mayan calendar thing is widely misunderstood. The reason it ends in 2012 is simply because that is as far as the Mayan Priests got on the calendar project before a new conservative Mayan regime came in and cancelled the whole thing.
Only reason. Budget cuts.

I just hope 2012 will be the continuation of waking everybody up to reality. Occupy may not be shutting down Times Square, anymore (though, I wish they'd do it once a week until November), but now they are literally everywhere. They are still shutting shit down. They've been particularly active in Des Moines, lately, even though the MSM doesn't care to cover them, anymore.

Solidarity, you Fiery Yoof! You give me hope for the generations to come! Many blessings of every sort upon you, and may you publish The Next Great Novel and right quick, too. It's been a pleasure knowing you every day, fellow-Wonketeer!

But not from any of *his* survivalist buddies, who buy their stock at clearance (thereby ensuring pitifully low germination rates). Get them from neighbours who have grown them (best way to ensure they're adapted to your microclimate) or, barring that, from seed banks which deal in heirloom, open-pollinated varieties.

Got to the party late as usual, but in case anyone checks in between now and the next Official Wonkette Posting: A very happy celebratory weekend one and all. It's been wonderful knowing you, and I look forward to many happy pre-apocalyptic celebrations together (well, as long as civilization hasn't *quite* collapsed yet, we can party!. Enjoy your wicked selves as only you can and for crisake remember, most of y'all go back to work on Tuesday, so hold down the substance abuse.

sati_demise

going to work on tuesday is the reason to over indulge on any given substance in the time allowed

Um … thanks, I think, and the same to you. (hugs Mojopo) Ah, wotthehell, I'm feeling extra-huggy and Barb hugged me back, which always makes me feel extra-huggable, so you have a wonderful New Year. May it just continue to get better.

Buckminster

I vote for a huge celebration. I'm much more fun at parties than at funerals.

DahBoner

My cat calls dibs on your stuff…

C_R_Eature

Well…Ken’s appallingly depressing, Apocalyptic end of the year post is as good a time and place as any for me to pop up from the Abyss and wish all good Wonkeratti a Happy & successful Gregorian Calendar New Year. May your Wits be sharp, your Enemies confused and your liquor cabinet full.
Completely OT, but quite interesting nonetheless- I’ve spent the last few months finalizing the results on our NOAA/NIMH Interspecies communication project with Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. Using high speed video and audio recordings and state –of– the –art computer algorithms, we’ve managed to decipher one actual message from them. The rough translation is below:
“SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH”
What could this mean?
Best Regards for the New Year, C.R.